911, I need help

Men's Fitness, May, 2003 by Billy Talaber

I was so motivated by the Success Story ["Answering the Call to Fitness"] in your January issue, the one featuring the 911 Fitness Challenge winners, that I have started my very own (albeit much smaller) fitness contest. I live in Germany and work on a small military base, so it was impossible to take part in the 911 challenge held in the United States. In our challenge, we will have a total of 10 two-person teams. Body-fat testing will be done by the gym on base here, using the caliper method, but I need some help on how to figure out lean muscle gains (as this is the second part of our contest, the first being decrease in body-fat percentage).

--BILLY TALABER, GERMANY

Easy, Billy. Here's the deal. Say, for example, you start the contest weighing 200 pounds at 20 percent body fat. You would multiply 200 by 0.2, then subtract the product (in this case, 40) to get your lean body mass, which would thus be 160 pounds to start the contest.

All right, now you're done with the contest and it's time to take your new measurements. Your weight dropped to 195 pounds, and your body fat dropped to 12 percent. So multiply 195 by 0.12, and you'll get 23.4. Now subtract 23 (we're rounding off here) from 195. Your lean body mass is 172 pounds. Congrats, buddy. You've just gained 12 pounds of lean muscle in 12 weeks.

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